Thursday, 6 October 2011

Degas

On the 28th of September, I went to Royal Academy of Art to see the exhibition of Degas' paintings.

I personally really like Degas' paintings of ballet dancers because of the beautiful soft colour, excellent composition, and the subject of painting itself.

This exhibition was not only just features Degas' paintings but also it explores Degas' figure of ballet dancers as accurate figure of motion capture. The interest thing I thought was that the way of how Degas observed his subject is related to the scientific study of motion capture. Before high-speed continuance photography invented, Degas tried to trace each action of dancers in his rough drawings. And he even he drew a girl from more than 20 different angles turning around to understand the girl as a 3 dimensional figure when he tried to make a statue.

I found that Degas was not just a genius but a person based on lots of lots of study by himself. I think his idea and skill of observation were beyond technology at that time. It realized me that a great idea sometimes goes over technology.